Chapter IX: Miracles of Jesus (2)

All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark says, not to be sent out of the country, or according to Luke, into the deep) entreated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine feeding near; that this was granted them by Jesus; and that forthwith, owing to their influence, the whole herd of swine (Mark, we must not ask on what authority, fixes their number at about two thousand) were precipitated into the sea and drowned. If we adopt here the point of view taken in the gospel narratives, which throughout suppose the existence of real demons, it is yet to be asked: how can demons, admitting even that they can take possession of men,—how, we say, can they, being at all events intelligent spirits, have and obtain the wish to enter into brutal forms? Every religion and philosophy which rejects the transmigration of souls, must, for the same reason, also deny the possibility of this passage of the demons into swine; and Olshausen is quite right in classing the swine of Gadara in the New Testament with Balaam’s ass in the Old, as a similar scandal and stumbling block. [1224] This theologian, however, rather evades than overcomes the difficulty, by the observation that we are here to suppose, not an entrance of the individual demons into the individual swine, but merely an influence of all the evil spirits on the swine collectively. For the expression, εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, to enter into the swine, as it stands opposed to the expression, ἐξελθεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, to go out of the man, cannot possibly mean otherwise than that the demons were to assume the same relation to the swine which they had borne to the possessed man; besides, a mere influence could not preserve them from banishment out of the country or into the deep, but only an actual habitation of the bodies of the animals: so that the scandal and stumbling block remain. Thus the prayer in question cannot possibly have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish maniacs, sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment, because without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires; [1225] if therefore they were driven out of men they must wish to enter into the bodies of brutes, and what was better suited to an impure spirit πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, than an impure animal ζῶον ἀκάθαρτον, like a swine? [1226] So far, therefore, it is possible that the Evangelists might correctly represent the fact, only, in accordance with their national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should rather have been referred to the madness of the patient. But when it is further said that the demons actually entered the swine, do not the Evangelists affirm an evident impossibility? Paulus thinks that the Evangelists here as everywhere else identify the possessed men with the possessing demons, and hence attribute to the latter the entrance into the swine, while in fact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their fixed idea, rushed upon the herd. [1227] It is true that Matthew’s expression ἀπῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, taken alone, might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine; not only however, as Paulus himself must admit, does the word εἰσελθόντες in the two other Evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine; but also Matthew has like them before the word ἀπῆλθον, they entered, the expression ἐξελθόντες οἱ δαίμονες, the demons coming out (sc. ἐκ τῶν ἀνθρώπων out of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the men. [1228] Thus our Evangelists do not in this instance merely relate what actually happened, in the colours which it took from the false lights of their age; they have here a particular, which cannot possibly have happened in the manner they allege.

A new difficulty arises from the effect which the demons are said to have produced in the swine. Scarcely had they entered them, when they compelled the whole herd to precipitate themselves into the sea. It is reasonably asked, what then did the demons gain by entering into the animals, if they immediately destroyed the bodies of which they had taken possession, and thus robbed themselves of the temporary abode for which they had so earnestly entreated? [1229] The conjecture, that the design of the demons in destroying the swine, was to incense the minds of their owners against Jesus, which is said to have been the actual result, [1230] is too far-fetched; the other conjecture that the demoniacs, rushing with cries on the herd, together with the flight of their keepers, terrified the swine and chased them into the water, [1231]—even if it were not opposed as we have seen to the text,—would not suffice to explain the drowning of a herd of swine amounting to 2,000, according to Mark; or only a numerous herd, according to the general statement of Matthew. The expedient of supposing that in truth it was only a part of the herd that was drowned, [1232] has not the slightest foundation in the evangelical narrative. The difficulties connected with this point are multiplied by the natural reflection that the drowning of the herd would involve no slight injury to the owners, and that of this injury Jesus was the mediate author. The orthodox, bent on justifying Jesus, suppose that the permission to the demons to enter into the swine was necessary to render the cure of the demoniac possible, and, they argue, brutes are assuredly to be killed that man may live; [1233] but they do not perceive that they thus, in a manner most inconsistent with their point of view, circumscribe the power of Jesus over the demoniacal kingdom. Again, it is supposed, that the swine probably belonged to Jews, and that Jesus intended to punish them for their covetous transgression of the law, [1234] that he acted with divine authority, which often sacrifices individual good to higher objects, and by lightning, hail and inundations causes destruction to the property of many men, [1235] in which case, to accuse God of injustice would be absurd. [1236] But to adopt this expedient is to confound, in a way the most inadmissible on the orthodox system, Christ’s state of humiliation with his state of exaltation: it is to depart, in a spirit of mysticism, from the wise doctrine of Paul, that he was made under the law, γενόμενος ὑπὸ νόμον (Gal. iv. 4), and that he made himself of no reputation ἑαυτόν ἐκένωσε (Phil. ii. 7): it is to make Jesus a being altogether foreign to us, since in relation to the moral estimate of his actions, it lifts him above the standard of humanity. Nothing remains, therefore, but to take the naturalistic supposition of the rushing of the demoniacs among the swine, and to represent the consequent destruction of the latter as something unexpected by Jesus, for which therefore he is not responsible: [1237] in the plainest contradiction to the evangelical account, which makes Jesus, even if not directly cause the issue, foresee it in the most decided manner. [1238] Thus there appears to attach to Jesus the charge of an injury done to the property of another, and the opponents of Christianity have long ago made this use of the narrative. [1239] It must be admitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more justly, for when he liberated some fish from the net, he indemnified the fishermen who had taken them. [1240]

Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which those relating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder therefore that commentators began to doubt the thorough historical truth of this anecdote earlier than that of most others in the public life of Jesus, and particularly to sever the connexion between the destruction of the swine and the expulsion of the demons by Jesus. Thus Krug thought that tradition had reversed the order of these two facts. The swine according to him were precipitated into the sea before the landing of Jesus, by the storm which raged during his voyage, and when Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, either he himself or one of his followers persuaded the man that his demons were already gone into those swine and had hurled them into the sea; which was then believed and reported to be the fact. [1241] K. Ch. L. Schmidt makes the swine-herds go to meet Jesus on his landing; during which interim many of the untended swine fall into the sea; and as about this time Jesus had commanded the demon to depart from the man, the bystanders imagine that the two events [1242] stood in the relation of cause and effect. The prominent part which is played in these endeavours at explanation, by the accidental coincidence of many circumstances, betrays that maladroit mixture of the mythical system of interpretation with the natural which characterizes the earliest attempts, from the mythical point of view. Instead of inventing a natural foundation, for which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree explains the actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miraculous; we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which the story of the swine in the history before us might be explained?

We have already adduced one opinion of that age bearing on this point, namely, that demons are unwilling to remain without bodies, and that they have a predilection for impure places, whence the bodies of swine must be best suited to them: this does not however explain why they should have precipitated the swine into the water. But we are not destitute of information that will throw light on this also. Josephus tells us of a Jewish conjuror who cast out demons by forms and means derived from Solomon, that in order to convince the bystanders of the reality of his expulsions, he set a vessel of water in the neighbourhood of the possessed person, so that the departing demon must throw it down and thus give ocular proof to the spectators that he was out of the man. [1243] In like manner it is narrated of Apollonius of Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to depart with a visible sign, whereupon the demon entreated that he might overturn a statue that stood near at hand; which to the great astonishment of the spectators actually ensued in the very moment that the demon went out of the youth. [1244] If then the agitation of some near object, without visible contact, was held the surest proof of the reality of an expulsion of demons: this proof could not be wanting to Jesus; nay, while in the case of Eleazar, the object being only a little (μικρὸν) removed from the exorciser and the patient, the possibility of deception was not altogether excluded, Matthew notices in relation to Jesus, more emphatically than the two other Evangelists, the fact that the herd of swine was feeding a good way off (μακρὰν), thus removing the last remnant of such a possibility. That the object to which Jesus applied this proof, was from the first said to be a herd of swine, immediately proceeded from the Jewish idea of the relation between unclean spirits and animals, but it furnished a welcome opportunity for satisfying another tendency of the legend. Not only did it behove Jesus to cure ordinary demoniacs, such as the one in the history first considered; he must have succeeded in the most difficult cures of this kind. It is the evident object of the present narrative, from the very commencement, with its startling description of the fearful condition of the Gadarene, to represent the cure as one of extreme difficulty. But to make it more complicated, the possession must be, not simple, but manifold, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, out of whom were cast seven demons (Luke viii. 2), or in the demoniacal relapse in which the expelled demon returns with seven worse than himself (Matt. xii. 45); whence the number of the demons was here made, especially by Mark, to exceed by far the probable number of a herd. As in relation to an inanimate object, as a vessel of water or a statue, the influence of the expelled demons could not be more clearly manifested by any means, than by its falling over contrary to the law of gravity; so in animals it could not be more surely attested in any way, than by their drowning themselves contrary to their instinctive desire of life. Only by this derivation of our narrative from the confluence of various ideas and interests of the age, can we explain the above noticed contradiction, that the demons first petition for the bodies of the swine as a habitation, and immediately after of their own accord destroy this habitation. The petition grew, as we have said, out of the idea that demons shunned incorporeality, the destruction, out of the ordinary test of the reality of an exorcism;—what wonder if the combination of ideas so heterogeneous produced two contradictory features in the narrative?

The third and last circumstantially narrated expulsion of a demon has the peculiar feature, that in the first instance the disciples in vain attempt the cure, which Jesus then effects with ease. The three synoptists (Matt. xvii. 14 ff.; Mark ix. 14 ff.; Luke ix. 37 ff.) unanimously state that Jesus having descended with his three most confidential disciples from the Mount of the Transfiguration, found his other disciples in perplexity, because they were unable to cure a possessed boy, whom his father had brought to them.

In this narrative also there is a gradation from the greatest simplicity in Matthew, to the greatest particularity of description in Mark; and here again this gradation has led to the conclusion that the narrative of Matthew is the farthest from the fact, and must be made subordinate to that of the two other Evangelists. [1245] In the introduction of the incident in Matthew, Jesus, having descended from the mountain, joins the multitude (ὄχλος), whereupon the father of the boy approaches, and on his knees entreats Jesus to cure his child; in Luke, the multitude (ὄχλος) meet Jesus; lastly, in Mark, Jesus sees around the disciples a great multitude, among whom were scribes disputing with them; the people, when they see him, run towards him and salute him, he inquires what is the subject of dispute, and on this the father of the boy begins to speak. Here we have a climax in relation to the conduct of the people; in Matthew, Jesus appears to join them by accident; in Luke, they come to meet him; and in Mark, they run towards him to salute him. The last Evangelist has the singular remark: And straightway all the people, when they saw him, were greatly amazed. What could there possibly be so greatly to amaze the people in the arrival of Jesus with some disciples? This remains, in spite of all the other means of explanation that have been devised, so thorough a mystery, that I cannot find so absurd as Fritzsche esteems it, the idea of Euthymius, that Jesus having just descended from the Mount of Transfiguration, some of the heavenly radiance which had there shone around him was still visible, as on Moses when he came down from Sinai (Exod. xxxiv. 29 f.). That among this throng of people there were scribes who arraigned the disciples on the ground of their failure, and involved them in a dispute, is in and by itself quite natural; but connected as it is with the exaggerations concerning the behaviour of the multitude, this feature also becomes suspicious, especially as the other two Evangelists have it not; so that if it can be shown how the narrator might be led to insert it by a mental combination of his own, we shall have sufficient warrant for renouncing it. Shortly before (viii. 11), on the occasion of the demand of a sign from Jesus by the Pharisees, Mark says, ἥρξαντο συζητεῖν αὐτῷ, they began to question with him, apparently on the subject of his ability to work miracles; and so here when the disciples show themselves unable to perform a miracle, he represents the scribes (the majority of whom belonged to the Pharisaic sect), as συζητοῦντας τοῖς μαθηταῖς, questioning with the disciples. In the succeeding description of the boy’s state there is the same gradation as to particularity, except that Matthew is the one who alone has the expression σεληνιάζεται (is lunatic), which it is unfair to make a reproach to him, [1246] since the reference of periodical disorders to the moon was not uncommon in the time of Jesus. [1247] Mark alone calls the spirit that possessed the dumb boy (v. 17), and deaf (v. 25). The emission of inarticulate sounds by epileptics during their fits, might be regarded as the dumbness of the demon, and their incapability of noticing any words addressed to them, as his deafness.

When the father has informed Jesus of the subject of dispute and of the inability of the disciples to relieve the boy, Jesus breaks forth into the exclamation, O faithless and perverse generation, etc. On a comparison of the close of the narrative in Matthew, where Jesus, when his disciples ask him why they could not cast out the demon, answers; Because of your unbelief, and proceeds to extol the power of faith, even though no larger than a grain of mustard seed, as sufficient to remove mountains (v. 19 ff.): it cannot be doubted that in this expression of dissatisfaction Jesus apostrophizes his disciples, in whose inability to cast out the demon, he finds a proof of their still deficient faith. [1248] This concluding explanation of the want of power in the disciples, by their unbelief, Luke omits: and Mark not only imitates him in this, but also interweaves (v. 21–24), a by-scene between Jesus and the father, in which he first gives an amplified description of the symptoms of the child’s malady, drawn partly from Matthew, partly from his own resources, and then represents the father, on being required to believe, as confessing with tears the weakness of his faith, and his desire that it may be strengthened. Taking this together with the mention of the disputative scribes, we cannot err in supposing the speech of Jesus, O faithless generation, etc., in Mark and also in Luke to refer to the people, as distinguished from the disciples; in Mark, more particularly to the father, whose unbelief is intimated to be an impediment to the cure, as in another case (Matt. ix. 2), the faith of relatives appears to further the desired object. As however both the Evangelists give this aspect to the circumstances, because they do not here give the explanation of the inefficiency of the disciples by their unbelief, together with the declaration concerning the power of faith to remove mountains: we must inquire whether the connexion in which they place these discourses is more suitable than this in which they are inserted by Matthew. In Luke the declaration: If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, etc. (neither he nor Mark has, Because of your unbelief), occurs xvii. 5, 6, with only the slight variation, that instead of the mountain a tree is named; but it is here destitute of any connexion either with the foregoing or the following context, and has the appearance of a short stray fragment, with an introduction, no doubt fictitious (of the same kind as Luke xi. 1, xiii. 23), in the form of an entreaty from the disciples: Lord, increase our faith. Mark gives the sentence on the faith which removes mountains as the moral of the history of the cursed fig tree, where Matthew also has it a second time. But to this history the declaration is totally unsuitable, as we shall presently see; and if we are unwilling to content ourselves with ignorance of the occasion on which it was uttered, we must accept its connexion in Matthew as the original one, for it is perfectly appropriate to a failure of the disciples in an attempted cure. Mark has sought to make the scene more effective by other additions, beside this episode with the father; he tells us that the people ran together that they might observe what was passing, that after the expulsion of the demon the boy was as one dead, insomuch that many said, he is dead; but that Jesus, taking him by the hand, as he does elsewhere with the dead (Matt. ix. 25), lifts him up and restores him to life.

After the completion of the cure, Luke dismisses the narrative with a brief notice of the astonishment of the people; but the two first synoptists pursue the subject by making the disciples, when alone with Jesus, ask him why they were not able to cast out the demon? In Matthew the immediate reply of Jesus accounts for their incapability by their unbelief; but in Mark, his answer is, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting, which Matthew also adds after the discourse on unbelief and the power of faith. This seems to be an unfortunate connexion of Matthew’s; for if fasting and praying were necessary for the cure, the disciples, in case they had not previously fasted, could not have cast out the demon even if they had possessed the firmest faith. [1249] Whether these two reasons given by Jesus for the inability of the disciples can be made consistent by the observation, that fasting and prayer are means of strengthening faith; [1250] or whether we are to suppose with Schleiermacher an association of two originally unrelated passages, we will not here attempt to decide. That such a spiritual and corporeal discipline on the part of the exorcist should have effect on the possessed, has been held surprising: it has been thought with Porphyry, [1251] that it would rather be to the purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it has been supposed that the προσευχὴ καὶ νηστεία, prayer and fasting, were prescribed to the demoniac as a means of making the cure radical. [1252] But this is evidently in contradiction to the text. For if fasting and praying on the part of the patient were necessary for the success of the cure, it must have been gradual and not sudden, as all cures are which are attributed to Jesus in the gospels, and as this is plainly enough implied to be by the words, καὶ ἐθεραπεύθη ὁ παῖς ἀπὸ τῆς ὥρας ἐκείνης, and the child was cured from that very hour, in Matthew, and the word ἰάσατο, he cured, placed between ἐπετίμησε κ.τ.λ. Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and ἀπέδωκε κ.τ.λ. delivered him again to his father, in Luke. It is true Paulus turns the above expression of Matthew to his advantage, for he understands it to mean that from that time forward the boy, by the application of the prescribed discipline, gradually recovered. But we need only observe the same form of expression where it elsewhere occurs as the final sentence in narratives of cures, to be convinced of the impossibility of such an interpretation. When, for example, the story of the woman who had an issue of blood closes with the remark (Matt. ix. 22) καὶ ἐσώθη ἡ γυνὴ ἀπὸ ὥρας ἐκείνης, this will hardly be translated, et exinde mulier paulatim servabatur: it can only mean: servata est (et servatam se præbuit) ab illo temporis momento. Another point to which Paulus appeals as a proof that Jesus here commenced a cure which was to be consummated by degrees, is the expression of Luke, ἀπέδωκεν αὐτὸν τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ, he delivered him again to his father, which, he argues, would have been rather superfluous, if it were not intended to imply a recommendation to special care. But the more immediate signification of ἀποδίδωμι is not to deliver or give up, but to give back; and therefore in the above expression the only sense is: puerum, quem sanandum acceperat, sanatum reddidit, that is, the boy who had fallen into the hands of a strange power—of the demon—was restored to the parents as their own. Lastly, how arbitrary is it in Paulus to take the expression ἐκπορεύεται, goeth out (Matt. v. 21), in the closer signification of a total departure, and to distinguish this from the preliminary departure which followed on the bare word of Jesus (v. 18)! Thus in this case, as in every other, the gospels present to us, not a cure which was protracted through days and weeks, but a cure which was instantaneously completed by one miracle: hence the fasting and prayer cannot be regarded as a prescription for the patient.

With this whole history must be compared an analogous narrative in 2 Kings iv. 29 ff. Here the prophet Elisha attempts to bring a dead child to life, by sending his staff by the hands of his servant Gehazi, who is to lay it on the face of the child; but this measure does not succeed, and Elisha is obliged in his own person to come and call the boy to life. The same relation that exists in this Old Testament story between the prophet and his servant, is seen in the New Testament narrative between the Messiah and his disciples: the latter can do nothing without their master, but what was too difficult for them, he effects with certainty. Now this feature is a clue to the tendency of both narratives, namely, to exalt their master by exhibiting the distance between him and his most intimate disciples; or, if we compare the evangelical narrative before us with that of the demoniacs of Gadara, we may say: the latter case was made to appear one of extreme difficulty in itself; the former, by the relation in which the power of Jesus, which is adequate to the occasion, is placed to the power of the disciples, which, however great in other instances, was here insufficient.

Of the other more briefly narrated expulsions of demons, the cure of a dumb demoniac and of one who was blind also, has been already sufficiently examined in connexion with the accusation of a league with Beelzebub: as also the cure of the woman who was bowed down, in our general considerations on the demoniacs. The cure of the possessed daughter of the Canaanitish woman (Matt. xv. 22 ff.; Mark vii. 25 ff.) has no further peculiarity than that it was wrought by the word of Jesus at a distance: a point of which we shall speak later.

According to the evangelical narratives, the attempt of Jesus to expel the demon succeeded in every one of these cases. Paulus remarks that cures of this kind, although they contributed more than anything else to impress the multitude with veneration for Jesus, were yet the easiest in themselves, and even De Wette sanctions a psychological explanation of the cures of demoniacs, though of no others. [1253] With these opinions we cannot but agree; for if we regard the real character of the demoniacal state as a species of madness accompanied by a convulsive tendency of the nervous system, we know that psychical and nervous disorders are most easily wrought upon by psychical influence;—an influence to which the surpassing dignity of Jesus as a prophet, and eventually even as the Messiah himself, presented all the requisite conditions. There is, however, a marked gradation among these states, according as the psychical derangement has more or less fixed itself corporeally, and the disturbance of the nervous system has become more or less habitual, and shared by the rest of the organization. We may therefore lay down the following rule: the more strictly the malady was confined to mental derangement, on which the word of Jesus might have an immediate moral influence, or in a comparatively slight disturbance of the nervous system, on which he would be able to act powerfully through the medium of the mind, the more possible was it for Jesus by his word λόγῳ (Matt. viii. 16), and instantly παραχρῆμα (Luke xiii. 13), to put an end to such states: on the other hand, the more the malady had already confirmed itself, as a bodily disease, the more difficult is it to believe that Jesus was able to relieve it in a purely psychological manner and at the first moment. From this rule results a second: namely, that to any extensive psychological influence on the part of Jesus the full recognition of his dignity as a prophet was requisite; whence it follows that at times and in districts where he had long had that reputation, he could effect more in this way than where he had it not.

If we apply these two measures to the cures in the gospels, we shall find that the first, viz., that of the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, is not, so soon as we cease to consider the Evangelist’s narrative of it circumstantially correct, altogether destitute of probability. It is true that the words attributed to the demon seem to imply an intuitive knowledge of Jesus; but this may be probably accounted for by the supposition that the widely-spread fame of Jesus in that country, and his powerful discourse in the synagogue, had impressed the demoniac with the belief, if not that Jesus was the Messiah, as the Evangelists say, at least that he must be a prophet: a belief that would give effect to his words. As regards the state of this demoniac we are only told of his fixed idea (that he was possessed), and of his attacks of convulsions; his malady may therefore have been of the less rooted kind, and accessible to psychological influence. The cure of the Gadarenes is attended with more difficulty in both points of view. Firstly, Jesus was comparatively little known on the eastern shore; and secondly, the state of these demoniacs is described as so violent and deep-seated a mania, that a word from Jesus could hardly suffice to put an end to it. Here therefore the natural explanation of Paulus will not suffice, and if we are to regard the narrative as having any foundation in fact, we must suppose that the description of the demoniac’s state, as well as other particulars, has been exaggerated by the legend. The same judgment must be passed in relation to the cure of the boy who was lunatic, since an epilepsy which had existed from infancy (Mark v. 21) and the attacks of which were so violent and regular, must be too deeply rooted in the system for the possibility of so rapid and purely psychological a cure to be credible. That even dumbness and a contraction of many years’ duration, which we cannot with Paulus explain as a mere insane imagination that speech or an erect carriage was not permitted, [1254]—that these afflictions should disappear at a word, no one who is not committed to dogmatical opinions can persuade himself. Lastly, least of all is it to be conceived, that even without the imposing influence of his presence, the miracle-worker could effect a cure at a distance, as Jesus is said to have done on the daughter of the Canaanitish woman.

Thus in the nature of things there is nothing to prevent the admission, that Jesus cured many persons who suffered from supposed demoniacal insanity or nervous disorder, in a psychical manner, by the ascendancy of his manner and words (if indeed Venturini [1255] and Kaiser [1256] are not right in their conjecture, that patients of this class often believed themselves to be cured, when in fact the crisis only of their disorder had been broken by the influence of Jesus; and that the Evangelists state them to have been cured because they learned nothing further of them, and thus knew nothing of their probable relapse). But while granting the possibility of many cures, it is evident that in this field the legend has not been idle, but has confounded the easier cases, which alone could be cured psychologically, with the most difficult and complicated, to which such a treatment was totally inapplicable. [1257] Is the refusal of a sign on the part of Jesus reconcilable with such a manifestation of power as we have above defined,—or must even such cures as can be explained psychologically, but which in his age must have seemed miracles, be denied in order to make that refusal comprehensible? We will not here put this alternative otherwise than as a question.

If in conclusion we cast a glance on the gospel of John, we find that it does not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This omission has not seldom been turned to the advantage of the Apostle John, the alleged author, as indicating a superior degree of enlightenment. [1258] If however this apostle did not believe in the reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the author of the fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to the synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their statements, and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a false opinion, by setting the cures in question in a true light. But how could the Apostle John arrive at the rejection of the opinion that the above diseases had their foundation in demoniacal possession? According to Josephus it was at that period a popular Jewish opinion, from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did not visit a foreign land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to liberate himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John’s adored master, from whom the favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a hair’s breadth. But if John shared with his cotemporaries and with Jesus himself the notion of real demoniacal possession, and if the cure of demoniacs formed the principal part, nay, perhaps the true foundation of the alleged miraculous powers of Jesus: how comes it that the Apostle nevertheless makes no mention of them in his gospel? That he passed over them because the other Evangelists had collected enough of such histories, is a supposition that ought by this time to be relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a miracle which they had already given; and if it be said that he repeated these because they needed correction,—we have seen, in our examination of the cures of demoniacs, that in many a reduction of them to their simple historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or offensive to the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is said to have written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of accommodating himself to their ideas. But we must ask, could or should an apostle, out of mere accommodation to the refined ears of his auditors, withhold so essential a feature of the agency of Jesus? Certainly this silence, supposing the authenticity of the three first gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been an eye-witness of the ministry of Jesus; or, according to our view, at least one who had not at his command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of demons, being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks, were either totally suppressed or kept so far in the background that they might have escaped the notice of the author of the gospel.

§ 94.

CURES OF LEPERS.

Among the sufferers whom Jesus healed, the leprous play a prominent part, as might have been anticipated from the tendency of the climate of Palestine to produce cutaneous disease. When, according to the synoptical writers, Jesus directs the attention of the Baptist’s messengers to the actual proofs which he had given of his Messiahship (Matt. ix. 5), he adduces among these, the cleansing of lepers; when, on the first mission of the disciples, he empowers them to perform all kinds of miracles, the cleansing of lepers is numbered among the first (Matt. x. 8), and two cases of such cures are narrated to us in detail.

One of these cases is common to all the synoptical writers, but is placed by them in two different connexions: namely, by Matthew, immediately after the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount (viii. 1 ff.); by the other Evangelists, at some period, not precisely marked, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee (Mark i. 40 ff.; Luke v. 12 ff.). According to the narratives, a leper comes towards Jesus, and falling on his knees, entreats that he may be cleansed; this Jesus effects by a touch, and then directs the leper to present himself to the priest in obedience to the law, that he may be pronounced clean (Lev. xiv. 2 ff.). The state of the man is in Matthew and Mark described simply by the word λεπρὸς, a leper; but in Luke more strongly, by the words, πλήρης λέπρας, full of leprosy. Paulus, indeed, regards the being thus replete with leprosy as a symptom that the patient was curable (the eruption and peeling of the leprosy on the entire skin being indicative of the healing crisis); and accordingly, that commentator represents the incident to himself in the following manner. The leper applied to Jesus in his character of Messiah for an opinion on his state, and, the result being favourable, for a declaration that he was clean (εἰ θέλεις, δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι), which might either spare him an application to the priest, or at all events give him a consolatory hope in making that application. Jesus expressing himself ready to make the desired examination (θέλω), stretched out his hand, in order to feel the patient, without allowing too near an approach while he was possibly still capable of communicating contagion; and after a careful examination, he expressed, as its result, the conviction that the patient was no longer in a contagious state (καθαρίσθητι), whereupon quickly and easily (εὐθέως) the leprosy actually disappeared. [1259]

Here, in the first place, the supposition that the leper was precisely at the crisis of healing is foreign to the text, which in the two first Evangelists speaks merely of leprosy, while the πλήρης λέπρας of the third can mean nothing else than the Old Testament expression מְצֹרָע כַּשָּׁלֶג (Exod. iv. 6, Num. xii. 10; 2 Kings v. 27), which, according to the connexion in every instance, signifies the worst stage of leprosy. That the word καθαρίζειν in the Hebraic and Hellenistic use of the Greek language, might also mean merely to pronounce clean is not to be denied, only it must retain the signification throughout the passage. But that after having narrated that Jesus had said, Be thou clean, καθαρίσθητι, Matthew should have added καὶ εὐθέως ἐκαθαρίσθη κ.τ.λ. in the sense that thus the sick man was actually pronounced clean by Jesus, is, from the absurd tautology such an interpretation would introduce, so inconceivable, that we must here, and consequently throughout the narrative, understand the word καθαρίζεσθαι of actual cleansing. It is sufficient to remind the reader of the expressions λεπροὶ καθαρίζονται, the lepers are cleansed (Matt. xi. 5), and λεπροὺς καθαρίζετε, cleanse the lepers (Matt. x. 8), where neither can the latter word signify merely to pronounce clean, nor can it have another meaning than in the narrative before us. But the point in which the natural interpretation the most plainly betrays its weakness, is the disjunction of θέλω, I will, from καθαρίσθητι, be thou clean. Who can persuade himself that these words, united as they are in all the three narratives, were separated by a considerable pause—that θέλω was spoken during or more properly before the manipulation, καθαρίσθητι after, when all the Evangelists represent the two words as having been uttered by Jesus without separation whilst he touched the leper? Surely, if the alleged sense had been the original one, at least one of the Evangelists, instead of the words ἥψατο αὐτοῦ ὁ Ἰησοῦς λέγων· θέλω, καθαρίσθητι, Jesus touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean, would have substituted the more accurate expression, ὁ Ἰ. ἀπεκρίνατο· θέλω, καὶ ἁψάμενος αὐτοῦ εἶπε· καθαρίσθητι, Jesus answered, I will; and having touched him, said: be thou clean. But if καθαρίσθητι was spoken in one breath with θέλω, so that Jesus announces the cleansing simply as a result of his will without any intermediate examination, the former word cannot possibly signify a mere declaration of cleanness, to which a previous examination would be requisite, and it must signify an actual making clean. It follows, therefore, that the word ἅπτεσθαι in this connexion is not to be understood of an exploratory manipulation, but, as in all other narratives of the same class, of a curative touch.

In support of his natural explanation of this incident, Paulus appeals to the rule, that invariably the ordinary and regular is to be presupposed in a narrative where the contrary is not expressly indicated. [1260] But this rule shares the ambiguity which is characteristic of the entire system of natural interpretation, since it leaves undecided what is ordinary and regular in our estimation, and what was so in the ideas of the author whose writings are to be explained. Certainly, if I have a Gibbon before me, I must in his narratives presuppose only natural causes and occurrences when he does not expressly convey the contrary, because to a writer of his cultivation, the supernatural is at the utmost only conceivable as a rare exception. But the case is altered when I take up an Herodotus, in whose mode of thought the intervention of higher powers is by no means unusual and out of rule; and when I am considering a collection of anecdotes which are the product of Jewish soil, and the object of which is to represent an individual as a prophet of the highest rank—as a man in the most intimate connexion with the Deity, to meet with the supernatural is so completely a thing of course, that the rule of the rationalists must here be reversed, and we must say: where, in such narratives, importance is attached to results which, regarded as natural, would have no importance whatever,—there, supernatural causes must be expressly excluded, if we are not to presuppose it the opinion of the narrator that such causes were in action. Moreover, in the history before us, the extraordinary character of the incident is sufficiently indicated by the statement, that the leprosy left the patient immediately on the word of Jesus. Paulus, it is true, contrives, as we have already observed, to interpret this statement as implying a gradual, natural healing, on the ground that εὐθέως, the word by which the Evangelists determine the time of the cure, signifies, according to the different connexions in which it may occur, in one case immediately, in another merely soon, and unobstructedly. Granting this, are we to understand the words εὐθέως ἐξέβαλεν αὐτὸν, which follow in close connexion in Mark (v. 43), as signifying that soon and without hindrance Jesus sent the cleansed leper away? Or is the word to be taken in a different sense in two consecutive verses?

We conclude, then, that in the intention of the evangelical writers the instantaneous disappearance of the leprosy in consequence of the word and touch of Jesus, is the fact on which their narratives turn. Now to represent the possibility of this to one’s self is quite another task than to imagine the instantaneous release of a man under the grasp of a fixed idea, or a permanently invigorating impression on a nervous patient. Leprosy, from the thorough derangement of the animal fluids of which it is the symptom, is the most obstinate and malignant of cutaneous diseases; and that a skin corroded by this malady should by a word and touch instantly become pure and healthy, is, from its involving the immediate effectuation of what would require a long course of treatment, so inconceivable, [1261] that every one who is free from certain prejudices (as the critic ought always to be) must involuntarily be reminded by it of the realm of fable. And in the fabulous region of Oriental and more particularly of Jewish legend, the sudden appearance and disappearance of leprosy presents itself the first thing. When Jehovah endowed Moses, as a preparation for his mission into Egypt, with the power of working all kinds of signs, amongst other tokens of this gift he commanded him to put his hand into his bosom, and when he drew it out again, it was covered with leprosy; again he was commanded to put it into his bosom, and on drawing it out a second time it was once more clean (Exod. iv. 6, 7). Subsequently, on account of an attempt at rebellion against Moses, his sister Miriam was suddenly stricken with leprosy, but on the intercession of Moses was soon healed (Num. xii. 10 ff.). Above all, among the miracles of the prophet Elisha the cure of a leper plays an important part, and to this event Jesus himself refers (Luke iv. 27.). The Syrian general, Naaman, who suffered from leprosy, applied to the Israelitish prophet for his aid; the latter sent to him the direction to wash seven times in the river Jordan, and on Naaman’s observance of this prescription the leprosy actually disappeared but was subsequently transferred by the prophet to his deceitful servant Gehazi (2 Kings v.). I know not what we ought to need beyond these Old Testament narratives to account for the origin of the evangelical anecdotes. What the first Goël was empowered to do in the fulfilment of Jehovah’s commission, the second Goël must also be able to perform and the greatest of prophets must not fall short of the achievements of any one prophet. If then, the cure of leprosy was without doubt included in the Jewish idea of the Messiah; the Christians, who believed the Messiah to have really appeared in the person of Jesus, had a yet more decided inducement to glorify his history by such traits, taken from the Mosaic and prophetic legend; with the single difference that, in accordance with the mild spirit of the New Covenant (Luke ix. 55 f.) they dropped the punitive side of the old miracles.

Somewhat more plausible is the appeal of the rationalists to the absence of an express statement, that a miraculous cure of the leprosy is intended in the narrative of the ten lepers, given by Luke alone (xvii. 12 ff.). Here neither do the lepers expressly desire to be cured, their words being only, Have mercy on us; nor does Jesus utter a command directly referring to such a result, for he merely enjoins them to show themselves to the priests: and the rationalists avail themselves of this indirectness in his reply, as a help to their supposition, that Jesus, after ascertaining the state of the patients, encouraged them to subject themselves to the examination of the priests, which resulted in their being pronounced clean, and the Samaritan returned to thank Jesus for His encouraging advice. [1262] But mere advice does not call forth so ardent a demonstration of gratitude as is here described by the words ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον, he fell down on his face; still less could Jesus desire that because his advice had had a favourable issue, all the ten should have returned, and returned to glorify God—for what? that he had enabled Jesus to give them such good advice? No: a more real service is here presupposed; and this the narrative itself implies, both in attributing the return of the Samaritan to his discovery that he was healed (ἰδὼν ὅτι ἰάθη), and in making Jesus indicate the reason why thanks were to be expected from all, by the words: οὐχὶ οἱ δέκα ἐκαθαρίσθησαν; Were there not ten cleansed? Both these expressions can only by an extremely forced interpretation be made to imply, that because the lepers saw the correctness of the judgment of Jesus in pronouncing them clean, one of them actually returned to thank him, and the others ought to have returned. But that which is most decisive against the natural explanation is this sentence: And as they went they were cleansed, ἐν τῷ ὑπάγειν αὐτοὺς ἐκαθαρίσθησαν. If the narrator intended, according to the above interpretation, merely to say: the lepers having gone to the priest, and showed themselves to him, were pronounced clean: he must at least have said: πορευθέντες ἐκαθαρίσθησαν, having made the journey they were cleansed, whereas the deliberate choice of the expression ἐν τῷ ὑπάγειν (while in the act of going), incontestibly shows that a healing effected during the journey is intended. Thus here also we have a miraculous cure of leprosy, which is burdened with the same difficulties as the former anecdote; the origin of which is, however, as easily explained.

But in this narrative there is a peculiarity which distinguishes it from the former. Here there is no simple cure, nay, the cure does not properly form the main object of the narrative: this lies rather in the different conduct of the cured, and the question of Jesus, were there not ten cleansed, etc. (v. 17), forms the point of the whole, which thus closes altogether morally, and seems to have been narrated for the sake of the instruction conveyed. [1263] That the one who appears as a model of thankfulness happens to be a Samaritan, cannot pass without remark, in the narrative of the Evangelist who alone has the parable of the Good Samaritan. As there two Jews, a priest and a Levite, show themselves pitiless, while a Samaritan, on the contrary, proves exemplarily compassionate: so here, nine unthankful Jews stand contrasted with one thankful Samaritan. May it not be then (in so far as the sudden cure of these lepers cannot be historical) that we have here, as well as there, a parable pronounced by Jesus, in which he intended to represent gratitude, as in the other case compassion, in the example of a Samaritan? It would then be with the present narrative as some have maintained it to be with the history of the temptation. But in relation to this we have both shown, and given the reason, that Jesus never made himself immediately figure in a parable, and this he must have done if he had given a narrative of ten lepers once healed by him. If then we are not inclined to relinquish the idea that something originally parabolic is the germ of our present narrative, we must represent the case to ourselves thus: from the legends of cures performed by Jesus on lepers, on the one hand; and on the other, from parables in which Jesus (as in that of the compassionate Samaritan) presented individuals of this hated race as models of various virtues, the Christian legend wove this narrative, which is therefore partly an account of a miracle and partly a parable.

§ 95.

CURES OF THE BLIND.

One of the first places among the sufferers cured by Jesus is filled (also agreeably to the nature of the climate [1264]) by the blind, of whose cure again we read not only in the general descriptions which are given by the Evangelists (Matt. xv. 30 f.; Luke vii. 21), and by Jesus himself (Matt. xi. 5), of his messianic works, but also in some detailed narratives of particular cases. We have indeed more of these cures than of the kind last noticed, doubtless because blindness, as a malady affecting the most delicate and complicated of organs, admitted a greater diversity of treatment. One of these cures of the blind is common to all the synoptical writers; the others (with the exception of the blind and dumb demoniac in Matthew, whom we need not here reconsider) are respectively peculiar to the first, second, and fourth Evangelists.